The shift comes after Republicans picked up two seats in the 2018 midterms along with a harder-right turn in the conference’s center of gravity. Soon Barrett began climbing the charts among Republicans to the point that when Ginsburg died in late September, she seemed almost inevitable. This spring, McConnell and Andrew Ferguson, his chief counsel, began discussing who they might have fill Ginsburg’s vacancy if it arose in the waning weeks of Trump’s term. In that meeting, the GOP leader and his top staffers settled on Barrett, according to the leadership aide. . . .

“We did a lot of outreach to find out where people were, who they liked. And by the time this one became vacant, there were a lot of unsolicited [requests from senators]: ‘I want Barrett,’” said Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.). “The calculus going into this was probably a little different than it was before.” . . .

[T] there was plenty of maneuvering behind the scenes in the days after Ginsburg’s death. Lagoa, for one, had surfaced as a potentially more mainstream alternative to Barrett.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) appealed to Trump on Lagoa’s behalf and Trump responded that he “heard great things about her and liked her a lot,” Rubio recounted. But the Appeals Court judge was also seen as a gamble. . . .

“Lagoa is a great judge but just no real paper trail, no real sense of what she would do even as a circuit judge,” said a person familiar with the nomination process. “Amy had three years under her belt. It seemed like the White House was running around trying to do anything but Amy.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) had pledged that he would only support a Supreme Court nominee that understands “that Roe was wrongly decided.” Two days after Ginsburg’s death, Hawley raised concerns to Cipollone about Lagoa’s lack of record on Roe, raising the prospect of a difficult confirmation hearing.

“I’m not asking you to confirm or deny if these are the two final contenders. But I’ll just tell you right now, if it’s Barbara Lagoa … my problem with her is that I don’t see anything when it comes to Roe,” Hawley said he told told Cipollone of Lagoa and Barrett.

Trump offered the job to Barrett one day later, just three days after Ginsburg’s death. . . .

But despite the lightning-quick vote, Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court was years in the making.

Former White House Counsel Don McGahn played a key role in pushing Barrett’s nomination to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, and even attended her confirmation hearing and swearing in.

Barrett particularly impressed conservatives with her handling of questions about her Catholic faith from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who said at a 2017 hearing that “the dogma lives loudly within you.”

“Because of the skill and the aplomb with which she responded, I think that might have been one of the moments that caused people to start thinking of her as a Supreme Court nominee,” [Senator Mike] Lee recalled. “She would have been fully justified in responding much more angrily than she did.”

Shortly after her confirmation to the Appeals court, Barrett was added to Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist and she was widely viewed as the runner-up to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. . . .